Miata Service

Baby It Was Cold Inside

Not in the house, even though the morning temps are now consistently in the upper 30s to very low 40s, but inside the engine of the Miata. A couple weeks ago, possibly on the last trip to pick up a pizza, I thought that the temp gage was very slow moving and as I got close to home the Check Engine light came on.

I loaded a car scanner app on the phone that reads codes, plugged in the Bluetooth OBDII dongle and got back – P0128. This indicates that the “coolant temperature is below the thermostat regulating temperature” and the most likely culprit is a stuck open thermostat. This causes your coolant to be always directed through the radiator keeping the engine cooler than it is supposed to be. It could be a few other things, but predominantly it is a bad thermostat.

I read a few posts on the Miata.net forums and the repair is spoken of as being simple enough. I then watched a couple of YouTube videos, including one entitled “changing a Miata thermostat in 7 minutes, but I’m getting to the point in my life where I’d rather pay to let the pros do it. I called my local go to shop and they were scheduling appointments 2 weeks out. Yesterday was the CTBNL’s day.

As Threatened

I did change the oil in the Miata today. When I pulled out the dipstick, before I started it up to back it out into the driveway, the oil level read full and it looked pretty clean, but I went ahead and drained it anyway to make room for the new.

That drained oil was put in the car last June at 79,300-ish miles on the odometer. The time before that, I did it the driveway here in June of 2020 with 77,500-ish miles on the odometer. The time before that was in Aiken when the 75,000 mile service was done in July of 2019.

Because it looks like the CTBNL is going to be on a yearly oil change schedule, this time I bought a synthetic blend instead of the usual straight dino oil. I’m going to start with the blend before I put full synthetic in it as a test. Because the last time I tried full synthetic in the previous Miata it started to leave spots on the garage floor. This is because synthetic is thinner and will find places to sneak out easier than the old school oil. Admittedly the previous car had a lot more miles on it than the almost 81k this car has.

1.8 miles of around the block.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 23

 

Impeding Oil Change

The Miata is way due for an oil change. As a matter of fact we are about 2 weeks shy of a year since the oil has been drained out of it. Back then it was done not in my driveway into a collection pan, but along Hwy 140 south of town, in the parking area of a fuel refilling station and on the flat bed of a tow truck.

That length of time shouldn’t be too much of an issue as the car has probably been a total of 1,500 miles since then. And I have tried to go for a drive once a week bringing the car up to operating temperature for a good 15-20 minutes.

Right now I’m shooting for this Saturday or Sunday because the weather is going to be at least in the upper sixties and sunny. The last few days it has been cold and snowy. Not too cold for the snow to accumulate any, it just melted on contact with the ground, but not the kind of weather to lay under a car and change the oil.

11.5 miles of around town running.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 22

 

The Prodigal Miata Returns

The CTBNL is back in the garage tonight after exactly a month in the car hospital.

Knew it was going to be soon because I got a call from Emmett’s yesterday, they wanted to know where the key for the aftermarket lug nuts was. This afternoon at about 2:30 they called again to say I could come pickup the car.

They had to put the car on a battery charger because it wouldn’t start for them yesterday (that’ll happen when The car sits for nearly a month.) So, today when we paid the tab they left it running outside for me and suggested we take for a bit of a drive on the way home.

When I got in the car the windows were filthy. Kind of to be expected because it was parked outside while waiting to be worked on. But not only was the outside dirty, but the inside was almost worse (how that happens I don’t want to know.)

We caravanned home and I left the car running while I cleaned the windows so we could go for a couple dozen mile trip.

It does seem like they wiped the back of the car clean of all the vaporized oil, but I don’t think they cleaned the undercarriage because when we did park in the garage after our short drive, you could smell burnt oil. I will give the Miata a bath tomorrow, but I’m not sure how I will get the chassis de-oiled.

Mechanically Induced Coma

The CTBNL is very sick. Right now it is sitting at a local auto repair shop in a mechanically induced coma for the next week or two while awaiting an opening.

A week ago today on the way home from a shopping trip over in Medford we were only a couple of miles from home when calamity struck. Cruising along at 50 MPH behind a BMW 3 Series when what should appear from right underneath the back of this car, but a softball sized chunk of concrete! With zero chance to avoid it, I held my breath.

Boom Bang Crunch Clang! I looked in the rearview mirror and could see the chunk tumbling behind me, along with a trail of smoke leading back to it. I instantly knew what had happened. A busted oil pan.

We were in the left lane preparing to turn off towards home in about 100 yards anyway, so I eased on over into the turn lane right behind the BMW. We both pulled into an unmanned fuel center. I immediately shut off the car and we had been leaking oil for only maybe 10-12 seconds.

The BMW driver got out and looked under his car. I don’t know whether the concrete piece actually hit anything under the BMW, but if it did, it was just incidental contact because he got back in his car and drove off (he did ask if we needed any help first.) I looked under our car even though I already knew what I’d see and I wasn’t disappointed, it looked like I had removed the drain plug. Our only option was to call a tow truck.

After the BMW drove off I got out and pushed the Miata several feet forward because where I stopped I wasn’t totally into the lot. The CTBNL had left a nice sized oil spot behind and oil was still slowly leaking. I called a local shop that had done some work on the Mini for us and they said they could do the work, but it wouldn’t be until June sometime.

I then called for a tow and about 30 minutes later the truck showed up. Once the car was on the flatbed, there was another slightly smaller spot left behind there too. I thought for sure that was all 4 quarts of oil, but when the car was offloaded at Emmett’s there was a small slick of oil on the flatbed.

Now we wait to see just how much it is going to cost to fix the CTBNL. Trying to determine what the breaking point is where we say, @%#! it, and save that money for the Wrangler.

Four Wheels Off

No, I didn’t take up racing and emulate Clunk (or was it Thunk) by over or under cooking a corner and ending up off the pavement. I decided to change the oil in the Miata today, even though it has been less than 2,600 miles since I last did it. Normally I change it every 5,000 miles and it was changed not too long before we left Aiken, when I had Automotive Workbench do the 75,000 mile service. Trouble is that was over 8 months ago…

As I usually do when the oil is changed, I change the location of tires from front to back and vice versa. That is why “four wheels off”, they are off the car.

While they were off I succumbed to luxury car anal retentiveness and lined up the center cap logos with the valve stems…

CTBNL Update

When they got around to looking at the car in the shop on Monday it would not start for them either. The first thing they did was take my trusty backup Cam Angle Sensor out of the trunk and put it in. What do you know, the car started right up. With the car not showing a Check Engine Light nor having a stored code in car’s Engine Control Unit the tech suspected it was the main engine relay or the ECU itself. Because the ECU would be expensive and a nightmare to replace they opted to change the hundred dollar relay first.

After replacing the part they parked it outside and left it running for about 30 minutes and it never shut off. Then in the afternoon the tech drove it around for 25-30 miles. It never quit. He repeated the process again the following morning with the same positive results. I picked up the car on Thursday afternoon and Donna followed me right home.

Since then it has been backed out of the garage and parked out under the awning twice. Once yesterday and once today because we had some looky loos visit the house and we wanted to make our paltry one-car garage look large. Full testing will be on Monday morning. After I do my morning walk, and with Donna at the gym, I’m going to take the car on an adventure tour of about 40 miles. she is suggesting that I just circle our one mile block 40 times, but I’m going to throw caution to the wind and venture out into Aiken County.

Even if it passes that test, both of us, one more than the other, will still not trust the car to get us to Hilton Head and back at the end of the month. There are just too many places while travelling through South Carolina’s Lowcountry where the road is two lanes with no paved shoulders, just maybe a half a car width of soft grass, bordered by water (and possibly gator) filled ditches of indeterminate depth.

We have started doing some of the pre-prep work on our alternatives, tune in tomorrow for details.